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Sauce Aux Crabes D'huitres — Oyster Crab Sauce

A sauce made with clam juice, veloute, egg yolks, cream, butter, sherry, and boiled oyster crabs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sauce Aux Crabes D'huitres — Oyster Crab Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Reduce clam juice with veloute sauce until thickened.

  2. Whisk in egg yolks and cream until combined.

  3. Stir in butter and sherry until melted.

Add the oyster crabs

  1. Boil oyster crabs in salted water for 2 minutes, then drain.

  2. Add the boiled oyster crabs to the sauce and mix well.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Clam + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veloute sauce
Forms the base body of the sauce that the other ingredients thicken and enrich.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat and add richness.
Butter
Adds fat for smooth texture and rich flavour as it melts into the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier texture.
Clam juice
Adds savoury seafood flavour as it reduces into the sauce.
Oyster crabs
Provide the main seafood flavour and tender bite in the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so whisk them in off the heat or over low heat and keep the sauce just below simmering.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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